Solid summary.

Here's the link to the Unofficial Acustica Master List for anyone curious: https://justpaste.it/AcusticaAudioAcquaMasterList

^ Note that these are the best guesses of doom64 and the community hivemind. Don't take them as gospel. They didn't come from the company.

He means the input can't be pushed much, like in the same way you'd drive the input of hardware to get more sauce/saturation. (i saw him talk about it at GS a few years ago)
It's one of the main things that Acustica haven't been able to emulate well.
That said, they've improved that element this year. They must've listened to Will's feedback!

Yeah that bothered me as well. I've been sitting on Pink for years without selling it hoping for an upgrade, then when the tech finally got good they released it in a new plugin.
I get it though, it takes a lot of resources to resample all of that. Resources aint free. I understand it, i just don't like it. One of the main value propositions of buying Acustica plugins is that you know you get free updates down the road once the tech is improved. So i feel like they kinda went against their implied promise in that way.

But yeah - despite me being annoyed about that i ended up buying Salt anyway. I trialed and it sounded too damn good. Had to snag it during intro price. Plus i got a nice loyalty discount (wouldn't have bought it otherwise)

 

Hi and thanks for a good read, I must say I feel fortunate that I chose UAD more than 10 years ago. serves me perfectly.
Soon I'll be able to try out AA - Would you Mind listing your absolute must-have plugins with emphasis on EQ And Saturation?

 

Thank you for the read, we have the EXACT same history with AA .

I've been using Nebula since it first came out and I still remember even using a wrapper ( dont remember name ) to add different elements from nebula libraries to make my ultimate channel strip ( something like SALT now ) . 3000$ later , i own most of them

Don't understand the beef with Giancarlo , whatever his personality is , it's irrelevant. Personally , I OWE him for providing tools that gave me a fighting chance to stand up against studios filled with racks and racks of ear candy

 

Always on the website, on the product page of the given plugin.
Look at the top right of the page, then there's a little 'page' icon to the left of the 'Add to cart' button. Click the page icon to download the PDF.

I'm not OP, but here's mine:

For EQ:
-Salt (Neve, API, SSL emulation)
-Cherry (super clean/transparent, and light on CPU)
-Erin (for broad strokes)

Saturation:
-Personally i prefer algo plugins for saturation. But Jam is probably the best offering with the newest tech, from what i hear.
-Ash is a great clipper. It's emulating AD converters that mastering engineers used to clip for loudness.

For compression i love El Rey

Note i haven't used them all. Nobody has. There's so many. Everybody will give you a different answer to this question.
As a general rule, anything released in 2023 and beyond is gonna be really good. 2022 is pretty good too but 2023 is where they made a leap.
There are some older ones that are still great (like El Rey 1), but in general you can't go wrong with 2023+

This is sorta the way i feel too. I mean, i can understand how people can get rubbed up the wrong way by his reactive communication style, but i think he's fairly misunderstood. The dude is extremely passionate about audio products, and very ambitious too. He has dedicated his entire existence to Acustica. You've gotta have a bit of an ego in order to have the kind of drive to be that productive. I neither like him nor dislike him as a person (i don't know him personally), but I do find myself admiring his ambition.
And he has chilled out a lot in recent times too. Not as combative on forums like he was in past years. He's more relaxed and receptive to critique these days. He doesn't get triggered as easily. I suspect that it's probably because he's more confident in the product now.
He IS still stubborn as hell. He has his flaws, but who doesn't? The past 24 hrs have been shocking to me to see how much vitriol people here sling onto his name. Is anybody a perfect person? No. Every person alive is just trying to find their way through life, trying to find meaning and purpose. People get so tied up in hating people they don't even know personally. It's weird. Lol

 

Last edited: Nov 21, 2023

Holy smoke! I totally forgot about that!
Yes, it was a third party wrapper NYRV agent!

 

In Pumpkin and recent products the built-in emphasis EQ is algorithmic. I think the Acustica guy said something along these lines recently on GS in the respective thread.

 

That's very personal and genre related.
I use them for electronic music so with that in mind I am going for a lot of coloring in sound.

Not a big fan of their saturation, the latest pumpkin is nice though, even the free version.

I usually like curves from hardware that add something special in sound and the summing options they give.

That being said :
Coffee aka chandler limited bundle for strings keys. Very open sounding curve bender.

Ruby can fix problematic bass tracks in mastering and also add life to dull tracks with its preamp. That's a DW Fearn eq.

Smoke has one of the best pultec eqs I ve heard, often unseen since most aim for the famous STA Level comp of the bundle.

Green eq is also super forward with its preamp. That's a GML 8200

Tiger is crazy good if you know how to dial a compressor and interested in that. It can act as a saturstor and limiter too. A true workhorse that can emulate many curves of API to SSL, NEVE etc..

Diamond is a super colorful with its preamp, again can revive a dull track.

Taupe is a tape emulator, I never liked the tape compression in this but it can change the whole tonality of the track if that's what you're looking for.

Snow for a pure modern Neve sound 5088 series. Wacky compressor but if you get to know it, it can do wonders in instruments and the secret weapon is the silk/red band but also the widening effect. Like no other.

El rey is just amazing comp, tons of low end color. I sometimes use it in my hi fi system when I am listening music.

Celestial is very versatile in mastering, this one was free I think. Very nice saturation for mix buss and the deeser has saved me so many times. The dimension also very useful and the preamp might cleanup a heavy bass dirty track.

Tan was the best SSL style comp I have tested but for some reason I never found it's interface inspiring. It's not SSL though,it's IGS audio multicore.


And of course cannot leave outside the:

Gold5 (vintage neve) 3102 is perfect for EDM.
3081 can do a nice trick for superwide screaming guitars with dual mono EQing.

Pink4 API bundle the 2500 take is very interesting with the rotating "thrust" mode.

Amethyst (AMEK designed by Rupert Neve)
My first aqua love.

Jade is very underrated too.
I use the Maag EQ4 air bands when diamond is not doing the trick.

I guess that's all that comes to mind.

 

^ Just to add to the above.

Ruby has a really nice high frequency boost. It can add some aliveness to a track. The low end of Ruby is a different sound than i'm used to, but it's interesting, it's sort of gives me a "rubber" feel, texture wise. Hard to explain. Kind of like a liquid rubber or something. Personally i use it with the preamp off, the preamp adds a kind of "artificial hifi" sound to my ears.

Coffee has a very STRONG / FIRM sound. The low end boost is very weighty.

Tiger apparently sounds very good but the workflow is an absolute headf#ck. Too many options, imo

Diamond EQ is one of the older ones that still holds up today. Sounds really good. Kind of a glossy/pristine sound. Can make things sound more alive. Great for dance music.

El Rey is a very transparent and soft knee compressor. Probably their best compressor imo (but i haven't tried them all), it's the only Acustica comp i've heard that doesn't have the typical Acustica compressor sound (which is usually kinda unnatural/digital/clicky or something). I love it on drums in particular, good for indie/trendy drums, gives it a cool gluey/pumpy feel. It's also amazing on vocals, and mixbus too if used subtly. It was made in conjunction with Greg Wells, emulating an old tube limiter that would usually get used on jazz music.

Diamond Transient is an interesting tool. It's an expander, based on a dbx unit, good for getting some extra punch out of a drum bus or a mix, or anything really. It has a way of making things pop more while also sounding kinda "gluey/gooey".

Crimson is basically unusable as far as CPU and GUI, but it sounds really cool. Very handy if you have a thin/digital sounding kick or something, you can really beef it up with this. Sorely needs an update though. It's based on the Vertigo saturation unit.

Lemon is an awesome sounding delay unit. The GUI isn't the most user friendly in the world but it sounds great, it's useful for making something sit in a mix right.

Silver is their reverb library. The demoes i've heard sounds REALLY good. If you have good enough monitoring to be able to notice front-to-back depth then you'll wanna check out Silver. I haven't used it extensively myself but i've demoed it and it's on my wishlist.

Others on my wishlist:
-Diamond Dynamic Saturator
-Opal Comp
-Space Control
-Cardinal
-Pensado EQ 2
-Camel
-Scarlett 5 (Sontec)

 

They're the same family of processes, volterra series being able to do convolution with memory. So in theory they could use it to emulate compressors. But in practice, it requires an amount of samples so big that you might as well just implement regular compression algos and apply a seperate dynamic convolution for harmonic distortion modeling. So it can't be the only technology, otherwise the model is inaccurate, or the plugin would probably need hundreds of gigs of samples. Plus, they have stated that they use modulation reduce the amount of samples needed.

And btw, volterra series are totally useless for EQs and preamps. Which are also the best kind of effects to emulate with signal modeling.

They have publicly experimented with it, but can't officially use the term "dynamic convolution" in their products pages as it is a Focusrite trademark IIRC. Also, it can go hand in hand with circuit modeling, as it can just be a block inside of your circuit model.

 

Last edited: Nov 21, 2023

Kemper (Virus, Kemper profiler ...) is a genius too.
But nowhere the attitude of Giancarlo.

When i was a Nebula first adopter, it was already a mess.
I thought things would improve (relation between Acustica and customers first).
But NOT.

Now Giancarlo will just BAN your account if Acustica detect any cracked product leftover.
They spend more time with protection than fixing bugs.
And this protection harms legit users MORE than warez ones.
Because R2R removed it ... like 10GB removed down to 1.5GB.

They are just going to kill themselves. It is sad, but it was already in the spirit since the beginning.

That's why piracy ALWAYS wins at the end, due to bad customers treatment.

Why paying to be treated like this ?
You start to buy legit ... and your account is LOST FOREVER.
Basically, you gave your money for NOTHING.

So WHY start to buy ?
Just use sister site : you will get a better product AND don't pay for it.

If Acustica was clever, they would have just added a nag screen and link to their website offers.
So power users would be forced to buy (clients don"t like nag screen piracy :D).
And others will just pass though the nag screen, until they got enough money to buy legit.

Now, they will just push angry customers on forums telling other potential legit users to NOT buy ANY product from Acustica.
What a clever move ...

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 21, 2023

That much is true. Additionally, the preamps of their old plugins produce clipping at the same frequencies, depending of date of development this freqs varies, which would be rather surprising for analog gear made with different hardware...

 

I don't understand the issue with Giancarlo as well, and I see a lot of people say they can't get the right sound with Acustica products, or that they're not as good as algo plugs. Why do you think other people use them, to get a worse sound?

 

Technical problems aside, Acoustica and Giancarlo's customer "service" is perhaps the worst
I've ever encountered. That alone caused me to stop giving them money years ago. Hopefully,
the witches will teach him a lesson, (but who knows? the man is stubborn!), at least they are
fixing things and removing the horrid copy protection which is so detrimental to any paying
customers.

That being said.....I can hardly wait for R2R to drop the Aero guitar series. What a fine
Christmas present that would be!

 

thanks for such a detailed answer!
much appreciated and i also produce synth-based music so it comes perfectly handly and I'm gonna save and check it all.

thank you, dear

 

are not Softube and AVID the worst when it comes to customer support, pricing and intrusion?
The only thing i can think of that Acustica Audio has done bad compared to these companies is add spyware to see user’s screen (according to some here) and if true (which seems to be) then exposing them and other companies doing this will destroy them.

 

People posting things like this should at least know what they even are talking about. Any kind of proof would go a very long way.

Also, do you really think that R2R would not disclose any sort of functionality like this? Wouldn't any of AA's customers scan their legit files for malware and these functions would just make it past heuristics? The straw man act claiming "other people are saying it" is a joke.

 

So its true? Cause thats really bad and something def needs to be done

 

AA definitely seems to be heavily using some kind of Impulse Response technology. All these AA plugins are obviously IR sampled - the resulting IR files of which are what strongly dictates the system clock frequency ones works at... With true algorithmic tech these kinds of operating limitations are much less evident resulting in a tighter code base for the plugin as a whole, and much less troublesome operation at any given system clock frequency for the end user... Algorithmic technology requires a lot more money, time, and brainpower on the development side to pull off successfully in the world of hardware emulation. IF AA actually used algorithmic tech (which I personally do not believe is within their wheelhouse) instead of just throwing encrypted impulse responses at some eye-candy GUI's, their plugin catalog would definitely be orders of magnitude smaller than it is currently.

 

Last edited: Dec 3, 2023

As has already been written, those who don't hear the differences either don't have the right experience to hear this level of detail and/or don't have a good calibrated listening system. Full stop.
It's no coincidence that the biggest admirers of these plugins are mastering engineers...

I read about Sonimus and especially UAD as the non plus ultra, but when UAD finally deigns to throw out all the plugins that are missing in Spark (they bang them out to the dropper for this reason, IMO) they too will be cracked and you will see that they are good algo plugins (many 20 years old) and nothing more.

 

Unless someone shows actual proof of it; it really shouldn't be spread around about someone's company. Someone could post a "story" like that just trying to "scare" people so they do not use R2R versions. Trolling or not, you should stop commenting about it because you don't know what you are even talking about.